


Pas de deux

by thedevilchicken



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: F/M, Guilt, Identity Issues, Implied Sexual Content, Mental Breakdown, Mid-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 04:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11394933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: He was the first thing she remembered, after.





	Pas de deux

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kay_obsessive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_obsessive/gifts).



He was the first thing she remembered, after, when everyone else was still just a face. 

She thinks the others tried to keep them apart and, in hindsight, that makes perfect sense; knowing what she knows about what she did when she wasn't really her and knowing what she knows about who he'd become by then, she can't really blame them. Adelle tried hardest, steering her away when she came close to the door, telling her to go to yoga class or to swim in the pool, and she usually did because those things usually sounded nice, even though she knew she'd gone there wanting something else. She didn't understand at the time because she was still just Whiskey then and not even a bit of Claire, but she understands now: Topher was in the room. While everything fell apart outside, he fell apart in there. 

When she was still Whiskey and not Claire, she didn't hate him, and not just because she didn't quite know how to hate. She was just inquisitive and so she persisted, waiting near the door till she could slip inside to see who was there because there was almost nowhere else she wasn't allowed to go (and none of them had people in them). One day, finally, she managed it. He looked at her across the room. She tilted her head as she looked back at him. She frowned. 

"Do I know you?" she asked, because she felt just like she did though nothing else had ever felt like memories. 

"Not even a little bit," he replied, and he scratched his head, messing up his already messy hair. He looked away and he disappeared downwards, under the edge of the sleeping pod where she couldn't see him anymore. Then Adelle came in and she steered her away, though Whiskey didn't really even know her own name then, let alone Adelle DeWitt's, let alone Topher Brink's. That didn't come till later.

She tried again the next day. She walked in while no one was looking - she'd gotten better at it, though she wasn't sure how long it had taken. And she looked at him and he looked at her and she said, "Do I know you?"

"I think maybe you used to know me better than anyone," he replied, and he scratched his head and he looked away and he disappeared down under the edge of the sleeping pod just like he had the last time. She went closer because Adelle wasn't there to stop her and she peered down over the edge at him; she watched him, curious, but then Adelle came in and took her away again. She didn't want to work on a tree like Adelle suggested so she went to art class and painted instead, though she couldn't have said why; now, considering, she supposes her aversion makes sense. 

She tried again the next day. She walked in when Adelle was busy and she went right up to the the sleeping pod, her bare toes curling over the edge. 

"Do I know you?" she asked, as she looked down at him, her hair hanging down around her face. 

He turned his head and he scribbled in his notebook and he said, "I don't think I even really know myself." He glanced up at her; he grimaced; he turned away again. "Nobody here really knows themselves. Not their _real_ self. Not what's really real. There's just so many blank slates, _tabula rasa_ , you know? If only they were _all_ blank slates. Like you." He glanced at her again, sideways, furtive, then he looked back down at his notebook. He rocked a little as he wrote some more. "Like you," he said. "Like _you_." 

Adelle ushered her out and Whiskey didn't try to fight it because she never did, because she wouldn't have known how. Adelle closed the door and closed him in. 

"He's not his best," Whiskey said. 

"No," Adelle replied, with a wry twist to her smile as she steered her from the doorway. "I'm rather afraid he's not."

It was three more days before she had another opportunity, but there he was when she slipped into the room. She went closer this time, right to the edge of the sleeping pod, and she sat there cross-legged on the floor to watch him as he worked. He talked, mostly to himself but sometimes to her, and sometimes he looked at her, just a little, maybe just for a moment. He didn't look at her the way the others did, but she wasn't really sure what that meant. She wanted to know. 

The next time, she stepped down into the sleeping pod and sat cross-legged next to him, and he didn't even look at her for what seemed like a very long time. But then he did. He squinted at her sideways. He frowned at her. He peered at her. Then he leaned forward just far enough to put his hands on her face, lightly, like her skin was so hot it burned him but somehow he couldn't not. 

"They took your scars away, Dr. Saunders," he said, his fingertips tracing lines she was sure weren't there. "Did it hurt?"

"I like my treatments," Whiskey said, like it was instinct to say it, like she was programmed to say it, and then she felt her brow crumple underneath his fingers as she frowned. "But I didn't like it when they did that. It wasn't like the other treatments."

He nodded. He touched her lips with the pad of his thumb and then he looked away again and after that, none of the things he said made very much sense to her. She didn't mind, though. He didn't talk to her like the others did. 

"Who's Dr. Saunders?" she asked, when Adelle took her away again. 

"You were, my dear," Adelle replied. "Once upon a time. Wouldn't you like to have a massage now?"

"They're relaxing," Whiskey said, and she smiled, and she nodded her head, and she went away to wait for one. But she was still wondering as she waited: if she was Dr. Saunders, why didn't she remember?

She slipped out of her pod that night though she knew she was meant to be sleeping. All the others were but _he_ wasn't; there were candles in his room instead of lights and he was awake there, writing. He was always writing, and sometimes she peered at the pages but none of it made sense to her. She thought maybe it should. She thought maybe, once, it had.

"I don't think you're meant to be here," he said, as she closed the door behind her. 

"Do you want me to go?" 

"Well, I don't not want you to," he said. "But then I guess I don't not not want you to, either." He frowned. "It's complicated." 

"I don't understand." 

"Of course you don't." He sighed. He put down his notebook and he rubbed his eyes. "I made you into a vegetable. Zucchini have a higher IQ than you do right now." He frowned. "I didn't mean that. Okay, maybe I meant that, but I didn't _mean_ that." He squeezed his eyes closed. "It was easier when you were you and not _you_."

"When I was Dr. Saunders?"

He nodded. He rested his forehead on his knees and she stepped down into the pod with him. She sat with him. She reached over and she held his hand, she wrapped her fingers around his, and for a little while he let her. Maybe she wasn't Dr. Saunders, but for a little while she guessed that she was close enough. And when he fell asleep, she blew out the candles and she lay down in another pod and went to sleep there, too.

"Can I be Dr. Saunders now?" she asked in the morning, when Adelle came in and found her there. 

"I don't think so, dear," Adelle replied. "Why don't you have a shower with the others?"

"I like the showers," Whiskey said. "They help me be my best." And she supposed that was true, but maybe she didn't really want to be her best because even her very best wasn't helpful.

"Can I be Dr. Saunders now?" she asked, after dinner, and Adelle said no. 

"Can I be Dr. Saunders now?" she asked, the next morning, when Adelle found her in a pod in Topher's room again. Adelle said no.

"Can I be Dr. Saunders now?" she asked the next day, and the day after that, wrapped in a towel coming out of the sauna, stepping down off of the treadmill in the gym, at the dinner table. Adelle said no. 

"Why do you want to be?" Adelle finally asked, short-tempered, as she fished her from the pod again. 

"He's not his best," Whiskey replied. "Dr. Saunders could help."

Adelle frowned. She walked away and Whiskey was confused; she hadn't made her leave the room. And she was curious, so she followed down the corridor and across the bridge where she liked to do tai chi with the others, and up the stairs to the treatment room. But she didn't like to talk to Alpha, though she couldn't have said why, so she just hung back and listened as he and Adelle talked. 

"But is it possible?" Adelle asked. 

"Sure, theoretically it's possible," Alpha replied. "But removing all the sleeper subroutines turned the imprint to swiss cheese. It won't last. She'll fade."

"But it's possible." 

"If you don't care who else peeks through the holes, why not."

Whiskey stepped into the room. "Can I be Dr. Saunders now?" she asked. 

Adelle looked at Alpha; Alpha shrugged; Adelle nodded. 

"Would you like a treatment?" she asked, and stepped aside to clear the way to the chair. Whiskey liked her treatments, and she knew that this would be a special one. She sat down. She smiled. When Alpha flipped the switch, the last and first thing she thought about was Topher. He was the first thing Claire remembered, not just the first that Whiskey did.

Afterwards, Adelle handed her her lab coat. When she put it on over her doll clothes, she was maybe Claire Saunders for the first time in months, but these days she knows there's always someone in there with her; Echo and Alpha are multitudes and sometimes that takes quite a toll on them, but her being two doesn't feel bad at all. Somehow, being both almost makes being either of them easier.

She went downstairs. She went to Topher's room and she looked at him, her hands on her hips; there was enough Claire in her to know just how to stand, and enough Whiskey to get her into the room to begin with. 

"Do I know you?" she said, and the smile was Claire's, too, bitter round the edges, though maybe Whiskey softened it a little.

He looked up at her. He grinned.

"Yes," he said. "You really do."

She guesses he was half right. And later, when she went to sleep in the next pod around the circle from his, the things he said made sense to Claire and through her they made sense to Whiskey. And the part where she knew she'd hated him, well, there was a hole in her where that had been. She didn't mind at all that Whiskey peeked through it.

It's been months now since then. Adelle doesn't usher her from the room these days and she's pleased by that but there's no more art class, no more yoga, and she guesses that's the trade-off for this thing she wanted. She goes to her office and she cleans people's cuts and she checks wrenched shoulders and she does the things she used to do, before, and on his good days sometimes Topher comes to sit with her. They eat lunch together at her desk. They eat dinner together, in his room or sometimes with the dolls, if he's feeling up to it, and she remembers how that would have never happened, before. Maybe he didn't _make_ her hate him, but she knows she did; Whiskey thinks that was a big mistake, and there's not enough of Claire in that space to remember how it felt.

And when they go to bed at night, the different parts of her both wish they'd known each other earlier. Maybe then she wouldn't have slapped Topher straight across the face the first time they saw each other after Bennett, like maybe it was all his fault somehow that she'd picked up the gun and fired it. Maybe she wouldn't have kissed him three weeks after that, in the server room, wretchedly, like being with him was her penance for what she'd been made to do and him, well, maybe it was the same kind of thing for him. Sometimes the sex was like an argument and sometimes like commiseration.

They go to bed at night and sometimes, on his good days, Topher knows she's Claire and he knows she's Whiskey, too. When he touches her face, she knows it's because he remembers her scars almost as well as she does. Claire misses them. Whiskey just thinks this way maybe she can be her best.

They go to bed at night and sometimes, on his good days, Topher takes her hands once they've put the candles out. Sometimes after that they share a pod, just for a little while, and Claire knows she shouldn't but Whiskey's not even close to being a doctor. Whiskey likes the way he looks at her when she takes off her clothes and she likes the way he makes her feel; she likes his fingertips against her skin; she likes his smart mouth between her thighs. She knows enough to know that Claire does, too, albeit guiltily.

Tonight, all she does is hold him. She's not mixed up enough to think she did this to him, but she knows she didn't help.

She just hopes they both hold on for long enough to help him now.


End file.
